Former Teamsters President on Trial

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

August 29, 2001

NEW YORK (AP) - As
Ron Carey's perjury trial got underway, two portraitsemerged ofthe
former Teamsters president: a hero who cleaned up a mob-infested union - or a
man so desperate to keep power that he violated the law.

Carey, 64, is accused of perjury and making false statements
during aninvestigation intohow $885,000 in union funds were
diverted to his 1996 re-election campaign.

“This is a case about a very important man who had a
very important job,”prosecutorDeborah E.
Landis said in opening arguments Tuesday. “In order to keep that job,
ladies and gentleman, this man committed perjury and he lied repeatedly.”

Defense lawyer Mark J. Hulkower countered in his opening remarks
that Carey, a former UPS truck driver who rose through the ranks, was “neither
a liar nor aperjurer.”

“He ended years of abuse,” Hulkower said, noting
that Carey slashed his own salary, refused to accept cost-of-living increases
and became the first union president to ride inthe back of a public airplane.

Carey's re-election victory over James P. Hoffa was
eventually overturned after investigators found that his campaign had indirectly
used union money. Unions are not allowed to use their own money to fund
election campaigns.

Carey rose to the Teamsters presidency in 1991 in an
election supervised by the Justice Department as a part of a government effort
to rid the 1.4-million-member union of mob influence.

But by the time Carey faced re-election, the union was facing
a financial crisis; its net worth had fallen from $152 million in 1992 to $16
million at the end of 1996.

The crisis, Landis said, came as Carey's campaign was running
out of cash, and unable to counter Hoffa's heavy advertising.

To fight back, Carey hired Jere Nash as campaign manager and
did not argue when he was told the campaign could illegally use Teamsters money
to pay its expenses, she said.

“The evidence will show that he not only let that
happen but that heactually
approved it,” Landis said.

After the election, Landis said, Carey lied 63 times in
seven different investigations. If convicted, Carey could get up to five years
in prison on each of seven counts.

Hulkower spent much of his opening statement attacking
Nash's credibility. Pointing to the witness chair, he said Nash “may well
be the least reliable person to sit inthat seat ever.”

Hoffa - son of Jimmy Hoffa, president of the Teamsters from
1957 to 1971 - lost to Carey by less than 4 percentage points, then defeated
Tom Leedham in a re-runelection
in December 1999.